Portland Mayor Sam Adams inherited a troubled city transportation agency in 2005, but employees who blew the whistle to him say they faced retaliation.

Correction appended

They thought they were doing the right thing.

Six employees in Portland's Transportation Bureau went to then-city
Commissioner Sam Adams in 2005 to warn him that timecards were being falsified and
bridges were going without maintenance. A seventh took concerns about stolen parking meter money to his office.
The employees were promised confidentiality and interviewed by an investigator.

But things spiraled downhill. The names of the whistle-blowers became known
to supervisors and co-workers. Of the seven employees, five who were reached last week
said they suffered retaliation, including two who say they were forced from
their jobs.

One, still employed by the city, wishes he had never spoken up at all.

"It's been six years," he said. "The only thing that's happened is some
good people have been screwed over, and the bad people have been allowed to do
what they want to do." He asked to remain unnamed for fear of retribution.

Bureau employees -- including two of the seven who came forward in 2005 -- sounded alarms about McCoy for years, to little effect and sometimes to
their detriment.

The problem was not isolated. A 2009 city audit found Portland had no
central system for employees to anonymously report fraud and abuse, that city
offices did not consistently forward such reports, and that the city offered no
comprehensive employee training on the issue.

Now Gordon Johnston, a former aide to Adams who worked with the 2005
whistle-blowers, can only wish things had gone better.

"They came forward thinking they would be protected," he said, "and this
whole thing blew up in their faces."

Meeting with Adams

The episode unfolded after an employee in the Transportation Bureau’s
maintenance division approached Johnston, then a volunteer citizen advocate for
Adams, with concerns about stolen equipment, cronyism and timecard tampering.
The employee led Johnston to more maintenance workers.

Johnston informed Adams, who was assigned to oversee the Transportation
Bureau in summer 2005. Adams helped arrange for five of the whistle-blowers to meet with him. For secrecy’s
sake, they gathered at the home of Adams aide Roland Chlapowski. Two whistle-blowers came forward after that.

At the meeting, Adams vowed to protect the whistle-blowers, Johnston said.
“His exact words were: ‘You’ll have whistle-blower status, and we won’t reveal
your names to anyone,’" he said.

Now, the names of four of the seven whistle-blowers are a matter of public
record: maintenance manager Bill Clark; worker Dana Whitley; Russ Gilbert,
another maintenance manager; and Barbara Krieg, a parking meter tech supervisor.

Krieg, who along with Gilbert had been involved in reporting suspicions about
McCoy, brought concerns to Adams' office after the meeting about how parking meter money was being safeguarded.

"I hesitate to take my concerns to upper management, or HR for fear (of)
retribution," she wrote in an email to Adams aides. She asked that her identity
be kept "in the highest confidence."

Order to share names

Johnston, the Adams aide, worked the case for months. Then Adams
and Sue Keil, Transportation Bureau director at the time, hired a retired city
employee, Harvey McGowan, to investigate further. On May 4, 2006, Adams and Keil
wrote a letter to the whistle-blowers, urging them to be candid with McGowan.

Aides insisted on addressing the envelopes so Keil wouldn't learn the
names, said Terry Richardson, then Adams' labor liaison. But on May 5, 2006,
Adams, at the urging of his chief of staff, Tom Miller, ordered aides to give
the names to Keil, according to Richardson and Johnston. Both said they and
Chlapowski protested, to no avail.

Miller said in an email that he couldn't recall such a disagreement. Keil
declined to comment specifically but said she took complaints seriously and did
not play favorites.

Adams, now Portland's mayor, declined in an interview last week to comment
on the decision; a city attorney said to do so would confirm the
whistle-blowers' identities, violating state law.

Adams did say he would divulge such names to managers, even if aides thought it would betray a trust.

"I have a responsibility to investigate complaints," he said. "I'm not an
HR-whistle-blower investigator, so I need to turn to others who are."

"They've been outed"

After the names were given to Keil, Johnston had had enough. In
June 2006, he resigned his volunteer position, in part over the handling of the
whistle-blowers.

In a letter to Adams, he challenged McGowan's impartiality -- saying
McGowan appeared too friendly with Keil -- and expressed disappointment over
disclosure of the names.

"The upshot is that the whistle-blowers believe you have not kept your
promise of confidentiality," he wrote. "They sense that names have been leaked
to a wider circle and recent treatment by supervisors and co-workers has been
chilled or even made hostile because they've been outed."

Whitley, one of the whistleblowers, said Keil let their identities become
known by scheduling meetings with them in the workplace.

"Everyone could see what was going on," he said last week, adding that Keil
dismissed his concerns. "Those were her exact words: 'Who cares if everybody
knows?'"

A string of legal claims

Shortly after Griffin-Valade issued her 2009 whistle-blowing
audit, the city set up an anonymous tip line and Web page operated by an outside
company. Her office is also offering revamped ethics training.

But Griffin-Valade said more could be done. City rules encourage -- but
don't require -- employees to report fraud. And the rules advise employees to
report wrongdoing to the city's Bureau of Human Resources or their supervisor,
with no mention of the tip line.

City Ombudsman Michael Mills, who investigates the hotline tips, said he's
looked at about 45 complaints since the line was begun and substantiated roughly
half. He also said the more protection a city offers whistle-blowers, the less
abuse.

"At the end of the day, the culture of the organization will be improved
and will be more ethical," he said.

So what happened to those involved in the 2005 case?

Adams went on to become mayor, and he appointed Miller to
replace Keil in running the Transportation Bureau when she retired this past
May. Keil then returned to city service in June as interim parks director.

Of the whistle-blowers, three remain employed by the city and have not
publicly complained of harassment.

The four others have different stories.

Gilbert said he was forced to leave his job in 2009 after the city denied
him medical leave for chemotherapy. He filed a lawsuit saying he had been
retaliated against for raising concerns about McCoy, though he says his 2005
complaints played a role, too, and he won a settlement of about $30,000.

Krieg resigned in 2010 while battling disciplinary action. She said she was
targeted because of her whistle-blowing.

Whitley remains a city employee but filed a tort claim, or lawsuit threat,
last December citing "years of ongoing harassment" since bringing his concerns
to Adams.

Clark also remains employed by the city. He filed a tort claim with the
city this past March, also claiming harassment for being a whistle-blower. The
claims are pending, and neither Whitley nor Clark has filed a suit.

Whitley said co-workers still tell him they've heard he's "trouble."

"But if they think I'm trouble, they better get used to it because I'm not
going to change my stripes," he added. "If I see something, I'm going to say
something."

He suspects the city's handling of whistle-blowers is more about avoiding
lawsuits than cleaning up problems.

"I think that ethics starts from the top," he said. "Why weren't they
interested in the truth?"

-Nick Budnick(Maxine Bernstein and Beth Slovic contributed to this report)

This story has been amended to reflect this correction published Sept. 13, 2011:

In 2005, employees in Portland's Transportation Bureau went to then-city Commissioner Sam Adams to warn him that timecards were being falsified, bridges were going without maintenance and parking meter money was being stolen. Five employees attended a meeting with Adams about the timecards and maintenance. Two other whistle-blowers later came forward, one of whom raised the concerns about meter money. A front-page article Aug. 21 and an editorial Aug. 23 were unclear about how many employees raised concerns about meter money.